(29-11-2013 10:36 AM)houseofcantor Wrote: After having evaluated the paper I can come to one and only one conclusion: Hafnof is a troll.

Someone has to stir the pot ;-)

(29-11-2013 03:24 PM)Reltzik Wrote: Read the methodology. They controlled with statements of the form "I wish" bad things would happen rather than challenging God to make bad things happen. The results differed significantly.

Quite right. That's perhaps the most interesting part of the paper. The biggest criticisms I works level are:
- a possible inherent bias in the authorship that could have skewed results in various undisclosed ways. Many of the questions came from an earlier PhD thesis by one of the authors. The theism or not of the authors is not disclosed I think. That said, atheists have been busy analysing religious belief for some time. The reverse is fair game.
- the size of the sample being fairly small: N=16 and N=19 for the atheists in the two studies.
- the composition of participant groups: the atheist group was selected online based on strength of disagreement with various statements. It isn't clear what biases this introduces or eliminates. It might have picked up high rates of former theists fur example.
- the nature of controls. The "I wish" statement may not be equivalent to the "I dare God to" statements. "I dare Satan to" or "I dare my grandmother to" might be more neutral to the God question.

It's an interesting study overall. Further research is warranted, and yes it may point to genuine residual feeling - whether that be belief, fear, anger, frustration, embarrassment, or other.

Give me your argument in the form of a published paper, and then we can start to talk.

I'd like to take a minute to call BULLSHIT. I think it would be very difficult to use a test like this and conclude in line with the threads title.

Theists are trained to reject reality. All the observable elements and relationships they have with each other are non-factors to theists. So it's not strange that a theist wouldn't react to perceived danger. An atheist on the other hand realises that they are very mortal. They acknowledge reality and they would react to a perceived danger. Is the perceived threat reasonable? No. Does this make the world view invalid? No.

8000 years before Jesus, the Egyptian god Horus said, "I am the way, the truth, the life."